The Endless Doctor
by BeshterAngelus
Summary: The Doctor's life has been shaped from the beginning by these strange beings known as the Endless. All find the Doctor fascinating and each leave an impression on his very long journey.
1. Destiny

AN: This is a CRACK story. I had the pleasure of meeting Neil Gaiman just the other night, and at the event he discussed many things, including _Doctor Who_ and _Sandman_. And so while sitting there listening to this amazing storyteller, this tale came to me, weirdly enough. So I've massaged it a bit and here we go.

* * *

Chapter One: Destiny

Robes twisted in sweaty fingers. His hearts thumped in his small chest, and his mouth felt so dry. But he dare not speak up. Already his elders were leading them solemnly into the giant room, with its marble walls and the large seal of Rassilion on the floor. Above it stood the hoop, a shimmering circle, whose depths flashed and stirred even without him staring at it.

"Go on," whispered the woman at his side, her hand gentle on his shoulder as she prodded him forward. "It must be done."

He swallowed hard, licking his dry lips. "I'm scared."

"I know," she said quietly, her fingers tightening through his robes. "I was too."

He didn't know if that was encouraging or not.

They stood, waiting, expectant as he tried to make his feet move. He tripped slightly over the clumsy robes, shuffling across the shiny floor, moving to where the seal lay embedded. Someone was saying something grand and important about the Time Vortex and great responsibility and understanding the secrets of the universe, but he couldn't understand them. He simply stood, knobby knees knocking as he tried to remember to pull air into his lungs and out again.

"Look into the schism, young one, and see what your destiny will be."

He didn't want to. Every fiber in his being told him not to, that it was dangerous, that there was no turning back. But he did, eyes turning up and staring into the glassy, swirling depths, his tiny, child's hands clenching as he felt the blood roaring in his ears.

Everything that is…everything that was…everything that could be….

The universe spread before him, shimmering and twisting, as time itself wound and unwound, slithering, serpentine through creation. He saw births, lives, deaths, the formation of whole universes and their destructions. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He wanted to laugh. Every fiber of his being, the smallest atoms of every cell burned, his mind ached, as somewhere, something deep within him howled with the beauty and fury of life itself.

He stood, transfixed.

And then someone beside him spoke. "It is beautiful, isn't it?"

The voice was as dry as paper, deep, but bland, but sounded very important. He turned from the awesome sight before him to glance up at the stranger. If he had been in the room before, he couldn't tell. Frankly, he hadn't been paying much attention. And he could recognize the man's face. This could be in part because he covered it up, buried somewhere beneath the deep folds of the brown robe he wore.

"Have I passed the test," he asked, his childish voice rough and broken even in his own ears.

"Passed?" The man seemed to regard him curiously. "You were always meant to."

"Oh," he replied simply. He glanced down, noticing the book in the man's hands, large and weighty, covered in leather, and chained with gold to his wrists. "Is that the Book of Time?"

"Yes," he replied. "Or Fate as some might call it. Destiny."

"Is it mine?"

"Some of it," he said, but didn't elaborate.

He frowned at it, curious. "Then am I a Time Lord?"

"Can one ever be a lord of time?"

It was far too strange a question for him to answer. "I can at least control what I do with it, right?"

"Somewhat, yes." He shifted, opening the book, holding it up, but far too high to read. "You have such an amazing story, little one. Far more amazing than any of your race before."

He supposed that was a promising thing. "You can read my life in there?"

"Yes," he replied, closing the book. "You have a very long story to tell and I will enjoy the reading of it very much."

For whatever reason that seemed to please him greatly and he smiled. "Can I see it?"

The cowl turned to regard him for long, heavy moments.

"It is not for mortals to understand their own destinies, young one."

He could understand this. As a Gallifreyan and a Time Lord-in-training, he understood this better than anyone. "But I'm not exactly mortal, not like everything else, am I?"

The cowl simply remained tilted at him. Perhaps he was staring it was hard to tell. But then, the man's shoulder's shook, and the small part of his mouth that he could see seemed to soften into something of a smile.

"No, you aren't, Lord of Time. You are something else quite different, even compared to the rest of your race." His voice was heavy and carried with it the same glittering edge that time itself did in the Untempered Schism. "Just for that I shall give you a present."

"Really?" He had to admit a present sounded promising.

The man nodded, the smile still playing on the open part of his face. He clutched the book to his chest with his left arm, while his right raised towards the Untempered Schism. Out of its depths, golden lines traced and unfurled, curling through the air around him, through the marble hall, dancing across the great seal, swirling around their feet.

"What is it," he breathed, reaching out a finger to touch a tendril that spun in front of his face.

"Time," the man said simply. "Your time. It is my gift to you."

He blinked, frowning up at the strange man. "What do I do with it?"

"Many things. What do you want to do with it?"

"I don't know," he replied, considering. It was like water running through his fingers. He couldn't tell if he wanted to grasp onto the golden threads and hold on for dear life or splash into it and dance.

"I wouldn't want to do anything bad with it," he said quickly, knowing that much was true. "I want to understand it, to learn from it, to gain as much knowledge as I can."

"And then what," asked the man beside him.

The boy was honest as he considered. "I don't know. Perhaps something good with it…something fantastic."

"I think you will," the man replied. "I think you are destined to."

He smiled as he regarded the shimmering trail around him. He was destined to do something fantastic.

"You are an amazing creature," the man beside him murmured, and he heard the rustling of chains as he felt cool, dry fingers tousle his hair. "And you are dear to us, my siblings and I. We all know you. How could we not?"

Know him? Who was he? Just a boy from Gallifrey. He hadn't even chosen his proper, Time Lord name yet. "But I'm just…no one, sir."

"No one." The man's thin smile returned then. "You are far from no one, young one. You are the champion of time itself. You are the Doctor."

He blinked. The name felt right. It felt good. And he liked it. "Doctor. Because I will teach?"

"I cannot say," the man replied solemnly. "But I can say you can teach the universe a great deal about itself."

It sounded awe-inspiring. It sounded frightening. It sounded exciting.

He couldn't wait!

"Sir," he whispered, a grin crawling across his face as he looked at the Schism and the golden trail wending around him. "How to I start? Where do I go?"

The man leaned over and grabbed one of his hands. It felt so small in his. "You see this path before you?"

"Yes," he replied, his eyes following the complex swirl of gold around him.

The man leaned over further, lips cold against the tip of his ear. "Run!"

And that is just what the Doctor did.


	2. Desire

Chapter Two: Desire

The Academy was not where he had planned to run.

The Doctor sighed, staring across the rolling, red fields, towards the forest of silver in the distance. For centuries this had been his worldview, the city beyond, the towers, the people of Gallifrey going abut their business. The very proper worldview of a very proper Time Lord who had once beheld time and space itself. And somehow, that had relegated him to a teaching role in the Academy.

Someday, he would get around to it, he promised. There was still so much to learn.

"Grandfather?" The voice was high and clear and teasing as it came through the open door. He turned. Susan smiled as she stood up to kiss his cheek, dark hair trim, and a bright glimmer in her eyes.

"Hello, darling," he smiled. It creased around aged skin. He had grown old in those centuries since he first was told his destiny and since he first ran for it. "How are classes?"

"Oh, boring," she yawned, curling up on a sofa in his study. "Trans-dimensional physics, quantum relativity and advanced mathematics, the usual."

"Those are the basics of what you will need as a traveler, Susan," he admonished, his tongue forming around her very unusual name. She had chosen it herself after her own trip to the Untempered Schism, a name from Earth, a backwater hole of a planet. She had insisted on it, despite her parents' objects. The Doctor had indulged her, as he did most things.

"Who says I will become a traveler," Susan sniffed. "You didn't."

That hurt. He admitted it. "I'm not a traveler because I couldn't pass the test, Susan. Failed my TARDIS navigation five times, even I had to say it was enough." He sighed heavily with an aching heart. So long ago, when he had been an eight-year-old boy he had held his hope so high. Now, he was an old man in an old body, watching as his granddaughter got the chance at something that should have been his.

"You, my dear, will get a chance to do something that I couldn't do. Don't scoff at it."

"Who says it is what I want to do," the girl challenged. He knew Susan well enough to know that wasn't true. Since before she had her moment before the Time Vortex she had spoken of how she wanted to become one of those few Time Lords who travels through time and space, collecting data, gathering it, protecting and policing time. It was the only thing she ever wanted to do.

"Another run in with one of your teachers."

The crimson flush across her cheeks and the guilty duck of her head was evidence enough, but he could feel the telepathic hum from her, the nerves, anger, and unease that always indicated when she had been quarreling with one of his colleagues. "Grandfather, I don't understand why it is we have this stupid, non-interference law in the first place."

"Because, Susan, traveling through space and time is dangerous." He was playing like a broken recording and he knew it. The girl rolled her eyes at him. "Because if you alter one, tiny little event…"

"I know, I know, the entire universe is changed and everything can be put in peril. At best, I will simply kill off a few people, at worst, destroy everything." She snorted in that way that all young people, including him once, did when they thought that the fuss was completely preposterous. "In all the centuries and all the times that our people have been traveling the universe, Grandfather, has anyone seriously ever done anything that drastic?"

"Hard to say, Susan, would we notice if it had?"

"We can read time lines, Grandfather, we could see where things went wrong."

"We can read anomalies, nothing more," he warned, shaking a gnarled finger at her young, exasperated face. "We always have to walk carefully in time, Susan, we can't go running pell mell through it, hoping for the best."

The glare she shot him from her perch on the sofa was hard, a mixture of anger and disappointment. "When did you become like them, Grandfather?"

It was accusatory and he couldn't decide if minded or not. He decided he did. "Susan, I'm a teacher here, you know I wouldn't go against my colleagues…"

"Time was, you once wanted to change the universe too. Remember? I've read your works. I know you didn't always agree with this."

The Doctor sighed, shifting uncomfortably as he settled on the couch across from her. "Susan, I was young then, a different man."

"No you weren't. You were the same man. This is still your first body! You've not changed." She leaned across the space between them, grabbing his hand. "Somewhere inside is still the man who wanted to take off into the stars and see what was to be seen, to change the universe. I know he's in there."

Her eyes were filled with so much belief and trust. His dear Susan. He had always wanted to please her. "Love, I'm an old man now. Far too old to run about the universe like a madman."

No matter what his destiny said he was supposed to be.

"That could change," she pointed out glibly. "You could change. Just regenerate into something different, something younger!"

"One doesn't waste the gift of time itself so frivolously," the Doctor snapped, pulling away from hers, agitated.

"Why not?" She gave him the look all the young ones did, that arched eyebrow that looked so much like one of his own. "Perhaps you could change, turn into a cosmic…hobo or something."

She laughed at the idea, and the Doctor had to admit he found the idea absurdly funny too. "What, turn into a ragamuffin, traipsing across the universe with nothing but my name to me?"

"It would be a sight more interesting than a stodgy, academy professor, now wouldn't it?" She leaned across, brushing her cool lips across his cheek. "Think on it, Grandfather?"

"When you think about not quarreling with your teachers," he shot back, earning a giggle and smile out of the girl. She simply rose, waving him off as she gathered her things.

"Back to the drudgery of theory, Grandfather, if I ever want to get out there and live it." She sighed melodramatically, leaning over to hug him. "I'll pay another visit soon."

"Right, there's a good girl," he murmured, watching her go. His Susan. She was so much like he was once. He had a destiny. He remembered that, the golden path and the word whispered in his ear. But he had gotten off track somehow. And now, now it was too late. He was the one thing he hadn't wanted to be as a child, a well respected member of society, proper, upright, behaving, as correctly as any Time Lord should.

"But does it make you happy?"

He looked up from his regretful thoughts, expecting Susan to have returned to tease him. But instead another stood at the door. He, or maybe she, watched him with liquid amber eyes, a smile curving up her, or was it his face. Where had he…she…come from?

"I'm sorry, can I help you?"

"No," the person said simply. Who he or she was, he couldn't say. They weren't even a Time Lord as far as he could tell. There was no presence in his mind, no place in his consciousness where they would be.

_Or am I?_

His eyes widened at the creature, staring at it in abject confusion. That it was breathtaking was undeniable, but what it was left him puzzled. It's dark hair was cut short, like a man's, but like Susan's as well, it's elegant features at one moment looked feminine but then looked masculine. The clothing it wore was about as non-descript as it was and just as beautiful. It could be a dress, it could be a tunic, it could be male or female. He had, of course, heard of aliens like this. But none of them ever came to Gallifrey. None of them would be allowed.

"I'm sorry…what are you?"

"No one you know," the person shrugged, lifting thin shoulders under the silken tunic. "Or at least, I'm no one you pretend to know. You've had your moments. But you haven't thought of me in a century or two."

"Thought of you?" The Doctor stared quizzically at the creature. "I'm sure we've never met."

"Are you?" It smiled, wandering into his office to take up the space Susan so recently left. "You don't remember me? Not on those days when you stared up into the stars, laying in the cool, red grass, watching their movements across the darkness of space? Not when you saw your classmates in the academy take up positions traveling through the universe while you remained here on this rock, clothing yourself in the bureaucracy of academia?"

It leaned across the cushions, resting its head against long, pale fingers, studying him with lazy eyes. "You don't remember me that day you met Susan's grandmother? How prosaic did that become, and so quickly too. You Time Lords take the fun out of everything, even lust."

The Doctor shot out of his seat, his venerable dignity stinging at this creatures teasing. "I don't know who you are or what you are, but you can leave my offices right now!"

It only smirked, a cold, cruel twisting of its lovely, full lips. "Are you happy?"

That was the question it had asked him when it had come in. "Whether or not I am happy is none of your concern."

"Of course it is my concern. Are you happy? Here amongst your books of knowledge, amongst your students, amongst the others who get to have adventures you do not. Are you happy?"

He felt all those emotions he had ignored with Susan in the room rise to the surface. His granddaughter had hit true when she had accused him of becoming hidebound and now this stranger was doing the same. "I'm well enough. I'm respected. I have a family. I have a good name."

"A name that you live up to admirably," the creature nodded in agreement. "You are indeed a doctor, a man of great knowledge that he shares with others. But it's a name that could be so much more."

"More? Such as?"

"I don't know. You could have a name that's known throughout the universe."

"And why would I want that," he challenged, both horrified and excited by the idea.

"Why wouldn't you?"

He frowned. This wasn't a conversation he wanted to be having. "I am content with what I have."

"But it isn't what you desire." The creature rose, unfurling itself off the sofa to stand before him, meeting him eye-to-eye. "You desire to be something more than just a man who sits for all of eternity, using all of his lives to simply read about what others have done. You desire to be a man who lives through what others have done, to see things, feel things."

The creature moved so close, its lips were hovering nearly on top of his own. He could smell the faint scent of something warm and fruity. It smiled as its words whispered across his skin. "You want to take the universe and taste it, to drink it in and swallow it completely. And why can't you, Doctor?"

Why couldn't he? He cleared his throat, torn between leaning in to kiss this creature, to crush it to him, to show it just what desire was and scrambling away from it as fast as he could. In the end, he simply stared at it evenly.

"I could…if I wanted."

That answer sounded weak even in his ears. The creature smiled, slow and deliberate. "You do want, don't you?"

"Well…I suppose, sometimes."

"Well, then?" It pulled away, the deliberate smile becoming more pointed as it crossed its arms across itself. "Why don't you do something about it?"

"Like what, do you suggest?"

The creature's smile fell somewhat. It's amber eyes rolled and for the briefest of moments the Doctor felt as if he were a child again standing before his teachers. "The Doctor, one of Gallifrey's greatest minds, and he can't think of the answer right before him?"

One dark eyebrow winged up, arching at him in a way he found decidedly nettling.

"What am I supposed to do, go and steal a TARDIS to get off this rock?"

The eyebrow twitched. The smile widened.

"You can't be serious?"

"Doctor, you'll find in matters of the heart…well, at least in matters of desire, I am always serious." The creature murmured slowly. "Now, if I were you, my dear Doctor, I would run, not walk, and find yourself a handy TARDIS to make off with."

"And you think this is going to work?"

The creature shook its dark head. "How should I know? Destiny isn't my department."

And with those words the creature wandered off the same way it had come out of his study, but not without leaving an aching longing in his soul.


	3. Delight

Chapter Three: Delight

The skies above are a pale lavender, the beach they sit on in a light blue, and the water lapping around them is like quicksilver, racing up the shore, leaving phosphorescent trails trough the rainbow colored rocks. It isn't the sort of place he would normally go to, but he had done it for his companion. For her part, Sarah was enraptured.

"What is this place," she breathed, kicking off wedged sandals at the door of the TARDIS, barefoot before he could even begin to explain.

"The name means roughly 'rainbow colored planet' in English, but of course that's not what the natives call it." He is a proper gentleman and leaves both his shoes and his scarf on, letting the ends of it drag through the aquamarine sand. "In about another thousand years it gets turned into a resort of sorts of aliens in this sector but for now it's just a quiet planet in a quiet neck of the universe, undiscovered by anyone yet.

"It's gorgeous!" Sarah meanders ahead of him, pale feet digging into the sand, stooping to pick up stones to study them. "What makes the rock look like this?"

"Reaction of the natural quartz to the phosphorescent substances in the water, at night you can see them glow."

"Glow!" Her eyes are wide in her pretty face, but quickly frown as she considers the surging, silver sea. "It's not dangerous or anything, is it?"

Of course she would think that, Sarah Jane Smith of Earth, a planet where everything beautiful, lovely, and perfect is destroyed by some chemical, or war, or factory, or bomb. "No, it's all perfectly natural, quite harmless to humans I should think."

Just to prove it he pulls out his sonic screwdriver, waving it over the rock. "See, all safe. You should give the water a try, it's lovely this time of year."

"It won't stain my clothes?" She glanced at her striped sundress and the Doctor indulgently patted her on the head.

"No, the water won't ruin anything. Go, give it a try, and indulge in the beauty why you can, Sarah! Live a little." With a shove he pushes her towards the tide and watches her, dark hair streaming, as she rushes towards the foaming waves.

"It's so pretty here, isn't it?" He thought for a moment he had said that or perhaps it was just the TARDIS talking to him again, but in fact it wasn't. To his surprise, sitting on a shimmering boulder, was a girl. Younger than Sarah, much younger, hardly out of childhood, she sat cross legged watching his companion cavort in the waves, laughing and splashing as she kicked up dregs of cerulean mud.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor apologized after a confused pause. "Have we met?"

"Oh, many times," she smiled up at him, a child smile in the face of a young woman. That she was as breathtaking as the scene around him was without a doubt. Strawberry blonde hair, filled with flowers, flowed in the delicious ocean breeze, her pink dress spread out around her in soft, satin folds. One shoulder, where the dress just did fall off, was sun kissed and sprinkled with cinnamon colored freckles. She turned her face up to the silvery ball above them, smiling into the face of this planets star.

"I always like going to new places that no one has ever seen before, don't you?" She giggled, glancing sideways at him. "But then, you've seen this place before yourself. But you like bringing others here, because they haven't. You like seeing it through their eyes."

"Yes," he admitted, smiling at his companion in the distance. "One can easily get bored with things, can't they? Forget the beauty and pleasure in them." He sighed heavily, leaning up against the rock where the girl sat. "I'm so old, I forget often enough."

"Old?" She laughed heartily at that, a full, loud, belly laugh that pulled from her depths, filled with gold and sunshine and life. "Old, Lord of Time? You are young yet for one of your race."

He couldn't help but stare at her as she said that, shocked she would know who he was. "How do you know me?"

She giggled at him, a childish titter that silvered the air as she reached up to grab the hat from his head and plunge fingers deep into the curls. "You silly Doctor, you are well known to all of us. And I've met you many times, with every new planet you find, with every new discovery, with every new thing that trips and catches your Time Lord mind."

Her fingers are warm against his scalp and he couldn't help the tingle that reached through his hearts to his toes. He would purr if he could, but Time Lords certainly couldn't…or didn't at any rate. He managed to keep enough of himself together to clear his throat roughly, though he didn't pull away.

"Am I to guess then that you are somehow the embodiment of delight?"

"Now who is the clever boy?" She leaned over to brush flower petal lips against his forehead. "It's no wonder my siblings like you."

"Siblings?" He couldn't help but be mesmerized by this fae creature as she let go of his hair and plopped his hat unceremoniously on his head.

"Oh, you've met them, some of them at least, and you will meet others." She didn't elaborate. "We're attracted to you because of what you are?"

"A Time Lord?"

"No," she replied simply, smiling coyly at him. "Because of who you really are, Lord of Time. Because of who you are beneath that name of yours." She poked his chest. He could feel the point of it, the bone and flesh. This girl was real enough for all of her strangeness.

"So why did you come to see me?" He had to wonder. Why here? Why now?

"Because of this!" She waved her arms wide, her dress dipping dangerously as she took in the entire world in her embrace. Her eyes alighted on Sarah Jane in the distance. "Because of her. There will be so many like her, so many chances to see the universe in different eyes. And you will love them all, some more than others. But they will always fill you with a sense of wonder."

"So many chances." He sighed, watching his most current assistant as she danced among the waves. "So I will lose Sarah then? Like Susan, and Ian and Barbara, and Jamie, and Zoe, and Jo?"

"Yes," she replied, something wilting somewhat in her gaze. "You will lose them, Lord of Time. It's the nature of who you are and who they are. But with every loss comes something new and wonderful. And you will learn. And it will make you wise beyond compare."

"And perhaps sad?" He stared up at this quixotic child. She met his look evenly.

"In sadness we find strength. In sadness we find courage. In sadness we find hope. But there won't always be sadness, Doctor. And you won't always be alone. You've never really been alone."

And in the distance, he could hear Sarah calling to him, his name floating in the wind. He turned to her, waving as she said something about joining her, her words torn on the wind. He wanted to tell her that he was having a nice, polite conversation with this girl, but when he turned he found the child had vanished as suddenly as she came.

How quickly delight fled in the face of reality.

"Coming, Sarah," he called, turning away from the rainbow colored rock, the sound of a girl's laughter floating on the breeze.


	4. Destruction

Chapter Four: Destruction

The universe burned. Blood spilled like wine across the cosmos as time lines shifted, changed, and winked out of existence before his eyes. It was enough to make him mad, if he wasn't already that way. He was an old man now, and old man in a velvet waistcoat and weathered, leather jacked, watching the end of the universe.

"It is never easy, is it?"

"No, it isn't." The Doctor's words whispered through the chaos. His companion, if you wanted to call him that as he wasn't a "companion" in the strictest sense of the word, leaned against the side of his TARDIS. It, like his companion and himself, stood dusty and worn, battered by the destruction all around them. He was a man, tall, broad, the sort who looked like a soldier. His hair was the same rust color as the mountains of home, his hands blunt and powerful. But it was in his gray eyes, in his stance, that weariness that spoke to just how tired he was of the scene before him.

"Gallifrey is gone, isn't it?"

"Yes," the man said simply, but not without compassion. "Or at least it will be."

"It doesn't have to be," the Doctor countered, almost imploring.

"Do you think that these things will stop unless it is?"

The Doctor supposed they wouldn't. "The Daleks always were bloody single-minded. All the way back to Davros. I should have killed him when I had the chance."

"Would that have been the answer, really? Would one person's destruction have prevented all of this?" The man held his muscular arms wide to encompass the entirety of what had been once Gallifrey, the shining jewel. Now all that remained was pride and memories. Pride to last till the end of the universe and memories that fed it and kept it going.

"They will never give up, you know. Even now, Rassilion is planning how we will survive while everything else will…"

He drifted off, knowing the other man understood what he meant far more than he did.

"He won't succeed. Not if you don't allow him."

'But if I stand up to this, our people…everything will die!"

"And if you don't, reality itself will cease to exist." The man with his stormy gray eyes regarded him evenly. "Which would you rather sacrifice, Doctor, the entire universe or the lives of your people?"

"Neither," he shouted back, tears blurring his vision as he gazed upon his broken home. Even now, in the skies above, Dalek ships, millions of them, hovered above them all, determined to rid themselves of their greatest enemies. And in what remained of the glittering halls where once he stood before the Untempered Schism, Rassilion was prepared to lead his people to ascension as he called it, destroying and forsaking the universe that they had promised to protect.

"Why must it come to this?"

"Some things just must," replied the man. He tilted his head, the waning sunlight glittering through the copper of his ponytail. "Everything dies. Everything ends. It isn't pleasant. It just is."

"Easy for you to say. I will be the one carrying the blood guilt of two entire races on my hands."

He didn't have much to say to this.

"I had such high hopes," the Doctor side, tears aching his throat. "I wanted my life to be so much more than this. I am the Doctor. I am a teacher, a healer, a man who brings wisdom. A great man. I am not the destroyer."

"Sometimes in destruction great things are created."

"Do you honestly believe that?" He glanced at the man beside him dubiously.

"I have to. Else I too would go insane."

"How are you certain you aren't?"

"I'm not," he shrugged with a small smile. "But my sister is very fond of me and delirium and madness seem to follow in her wake."

"Perfect, I'm taking advice from someone who is quite possibly mad."

"You have to be mad to consider something like this. And yet, it must be done. Neither outcome is desirable, Doctor, but which is the lesser of two evils?"

To let the universe end while his people absorbed time itself or to burn his own planet, condemn them all to hell and lock them there forever in time so that no one could return to change it. No one would survive. Everyone he loved would be gone, his family, his children and grandchildren, for what good he had ever done them. His friends, including poor Romana, they would all disappear into the hell that he would create, never to be free, separated from the entire universe for the rest of time. And he would be left, alone.

"I will forever be remembered as the killer of worlds," he muttered, silent tears coursing down his cheeks. "The man who destroyed his own kind."

"No one said destiny meant you got to make easy choices."

"To hell with destiny," he screamed turning on the man. "I've had enough of it. Since I was a child, I've done nothing but run and where has it lead me."

"I am sorry," the other man said, a wealth of compassion and grief in his gaze. And for his part, the Doctor believed him.

"So am I," he replied, rubbing the traitorous evidence of his pain away from his face, into the sand and dust of his home. "If I am to do this, I need to do it quickly."

"You have the means," he companion asked.

"Yes." There, in his pocket, he could feel it. "Perhaps, if I'm lucky, I will go with it. Do you think I will die too?"

"I don't know. That's not my department."

"Of course." The Doctor supposed that it would be something like that. "Well, then, if I must, I shouldn't waste anymore time on this."

He wished he could stand there and remember this moment forever.

"Best of luck, Time Lord," the man called. The Doctor didn't bother to turn to acknowledge him. He knew the man would be gone.

And soon, too, would be the Daleks, his people, and his home. If he was lucky he would go with them as well.


	5. Despair

Chapter Five: Despair

He couldn't possibly curl into himself any tighter. Every muscle in his body pulled, taught and hard, as he screamed out his grief and rage. His poor TARDIS, the only one left in the universe, absorbed it all but said nothing, knowing there was no meager comfort it could give it's Time Lord. It sat, humming to him, naked and writhing in his pain, the agony unrelenting.

Gone, gone, Gallifrey gone, burned, burning, lost forever…

"Weep, weep, last of the Time Lords, for beautiful Gallifrey, lost and gone forever."

He raised his head to blink through swollen eyes at the woman sitting in the corner of Zero Room. A woman sat there. Grossly obese and as naked as he, she sat crossed legged, her elbows leaning on massive thighs, her eyes downcast. How she got there he didn't know, but he had learned not to ask questions of her kind.

"Am I not to be alone in my despair," he whispered through cracked lips.

"Is it wise to be alone in despair," she asked simply. Her words fell from a ruined mouth, teeth stumps behind swollen lips. Her skin was sallow, marked with scars, little lines drawn across it in no pattern that made sense. On her thumb, a ring with a hook carved into the flesh above one, hanging breast.

"I have no choice, do I?" Who else was there to be with him? His people were gone, Gallifrey dead, that place in his mind where they had once all resided was now as empty as his soul was.

"No, you don't." She sounded almost pleased with this. If he could bother with the effort, he would have lashed out at her for it. But even that seemed too much for him.

"Go away," he muttered, burying his closely-cropped head once again.

"But you can't get rid of me, not at the moment. I'm all you have left."

That wasn't the answer he wanted to hear.

"Sod off," he muttered, resting his now lean, angular face against the coolness of the Zero Room floor.

"It doesn't work that way, you know," the voice continued dolefully. She sounded like a million Eeyores wrapped up in the skin of a hundred undertakers. "And is it wrong to despair of the one place you called home?"

"No," he replied with his eyes closed.

"The one place you never appreciated fully in life."

"I love Gallifrey," he snapped, eyes wrenching up, burning with vicious anger to stare at the thing in his corner. "I…loved my home."

"How much time have you spent there in the last thousand years?" One scarred eyebrow arched up on the puggish face, nearly up to the greasy, black hair. "How many times have you fled from your home and its Time Lords, run away from them when given half the chance?"

"That didn't mean I didn't love them any less! That I didn't miss them!"

"But you loved other places more…Earth for example."

He did love Earth, when he admitted it to himself. He loved it because it made him think of all the things Gallifrey could have been had it let itself. "Earth isn't my home."

"No, it isn't." The creature in the corner began to dig at the skin just above her heart, a trickle of red dripping between her ponderous breasts. "And it doesn't replace the sound of your people forever in your mind or the memories of a childhood spent far away on a planet that no longer exists. You will be forever different, Doctor, the last of his species, with nowhere to fit in and nowhere to go. An outsider, a wandering traveler, without blood kin, and you will be alone."

The woman echoed every thought that had wandered through is broken heart since the destruction of his home, every ache that had screamed through every cell as he changed. His eyes watered, filled with tears, as his shoulders began to shake, his chest began to heave. Gut wrenching cries filled his already choked throat.

"And," the creature muttered absently sullenly in her corner. "You have no one to blame but yourself."

No one…no one but him.

The screams and sobs echoed through the chamber, bouncing off of the white walls, growing in strength and fullness till they nearly deafened him. They rang forever and ever and he wondered if he were going mad. But he didn't seem to be...he was just broken. A broken, lonely old man who had destroyed everything that he had ever known for the sake of the rest of the universe. He was a killer, a murderer, had personally committed genocide on not just a foreign race but also his own people all in the sake of peace and sanity.

When had he forgotten how to be the Doctor?

"There are some that would call you a hero," the woman pointed out to him. He stopped his screaming long enough to raise his swollen face from his arms and stare at her, this naked thing sitting on the floor. "Some who would say you had no other choice."

"There are others who would say there was always a choice." Many of them were his past selves, he wanted to point out and none of them would have made this choice…he didn't think.

"Yes, but they weren't the ones who had to stand there making that decision, were they?"

"Neither, technically, was I."

Her dark eyes squinted at him pointedly out of her ugly, round face. "No, you weren't. Technically not this you at least."

"But I'm the one who must live with the consequences. And whatever face I wore; at the heart it was still me. And I still willingly destroyed and killed."

"Do you honestly believe that you, the great Doctor, are above such things, whatever you claim to espouse?"

"I thought I was." He didn't know anymore. He scrubbed his face against his forearms, tears, sweat, and mucus coating his skin. He was as much of a mess as the creature was and he couldn't care. What else did he have to live for?

"I could just kill myself," he muttered darkly.

"You could try," the woman replied. "But my sister never has liked Time Lords much and I doubt she would be merciful for you just because of me."

None of that made any sense to him, but he ignored her. "I could just hide here until the end of time."

"That is a possibility," the woman reasoned as her thumb ring grazed inside of her arm, a line of blood welling to the dirty, brown skin. "But you would soon get bored. That's your nature, Doctor. You never dwell on anything long; never hold onto those things that are precious. You would rather run away than face the truth of your actions. And I have a feeling that soon, true to form, you will do the same thing here."

She leaned foreword on her dirty, crusted elbows, close enough for the Doctor to see her stumps of broken teeth. "But you can't ever get rid of me, no matter how far you run. I will always be there, lurking, waiting to rise up at your darkest moments."

He stared at the creature, suddenly terrified.

"Go away," he found himself screaming, his voice so loud off of the Zero Room walls. His eyes screwed as he forced air into his lungs deeply just to let loose a volley again. "Go away, go away, and leave me alone!"

The sound of his aching despair rang around him as he let his head fall hard against the floor. In the reverberating silence he heard a sigh and a shuffle.

"Even in this, there is still hope," the woman muttered quietly.

When he bothered to look up again through swollen eyes she was gone. But in her place was something small and strange. He rose, his skin sticking to the floor, his muscles protesting as he moved to see what it was the stranger left behind.

It was a rose, a single one. Blood red petals against the stark white floor. He picked it up and wondered what it meant.


	6. Dream

Chapter Six: Dream

It was always the same. She stood there laughing at him, something he said, perhaps something someone else said, maybe Jack. And then the world turned upside down. And she was walking away from him, even as his fingers grasped for her. Pink and yellow and luminous and she faded from his vision even as he screamed her name.

The dreams hadn't faded with John Smith's identity.

Some nights he dream about other companions. There was his beloved Susan of course, dead and gone. There was Jamie every so often with his constant jokes and sense of humor. Other times there was poor, ill-fated Adric, the boy genius who tried just too hard, or Zoe who couldn't remember him. Neither could Donna, who along with Sarah had been one of his closest female friends, they both had kicked him into shape and he had thought the world of them. But both of them had lives now with families and no room for him. There were those who became something more than they were when he found them, like Victoria who became such and independent woman, and Jo who had finally found her voice and followed her heart away from him, and Ace who had grown from her teenaged rebellion. He had so many companions he would dream about wonder about, long for at times. But no one plagued him like Rose Tyler did. He sat in the darkness of the console room, the memory of her laughter, of that sly way her tongue would sneak out from between her teeth, the way her hand fit in his, and he wondered why he bothered sleeping at all.

And then it occurred to him as the shadows deepened around him that he perhaps wasn't even really awake in the first place. He was certain as they coalesced into a shape with a single bright star blazing in one of the deep, dark eyes forming he was in fact very much asleep. Funny, he hadn't even noticed it until Morpheus was practically standing right in front of him.

"So much for your vaunted senses, Lord of Time," came the soft, deprecating chuckle from out of the depths. The Doctor shrugged at the tall, gangly figure with his mop of night-black hair and his deathly-pale face. He had come used to such visits from this figure and the others like him.

"I see your entry is still spot on, Lord of Dreams," the Doctor greeted him, opening his arms wide, the fabric of his pinstriped suit rustling in its embrace of the console room. "How can I welcome you to my humble abode?"

"Humble it is not." Morpheus practically snorted as he moved, liquid like, around the console, smiling in dreamy softness at the time rotor. "Your ship dreams all the time. The stories she has to tell, the places she has gone, the things she has seen. She is beautiful."

"Thank you." The Doctor wasn't sure if he should be appreciative or not of such a comment but felt he should say something. In the face of Morpheus it was always best. The Dream Lord could be temperamental at the best of times, cruel at the worst. And over his long, long life he had come to know the man the best of all the phantom beings that haunted his life.

"To what do I owe this visit?" He might as well be welcoming if he was going to have a visitor. "I could put on a kettle, make a cuppa, perhaps find some of those biscuits that Donna used to like…"

"You know the reason you keep dreaming about her, don't you?" The gaunt man turned, cutting right to the chase, his dark robes swirling around him like night. The Doctor paused.

"Which her?" He knew he couldn't play coy with the likes of this being. None of his kind liked it. But he couldn't seem to help himself as he pretended to be very busy studying his sonic screwdriver.

"You play ignorant because you like being sly and clever, but I know your heart, Doctor. Just as I know who you really are." The man, who went by Morpheus though that wasn't his real name, could see beneath the mask of the man who went by the name of the Doctor. He smiled a thin smile, almost sad, as his jet eyes regarded him for long moments. "You pretend to yourself because it hurts so deeply. But dreams don't lie."

"Sure they do, all the time." The Doctor challenged cheerfully, knowing he was playing with fire as he did so. "I mean, everyone has dreams they can't explain, like walking down the street naked while eating a donut, or seeing a dancing midget who talks backwards, or having a giant meat pie land on your head, killing you, though why anyone would dream that I can't imagine…"

If he thought he could best the other man by letting his gob run non-stop he was mistaken. He merely stared at the Doctor with his fathomless eyes until he finally silenced himself, ashamed in the utter weakness he displayed before someone like this. Still, he couldn't help the self-conscious shrug and wry smile.

"Was worth a go, wasn't it?"

Morpheus wasn't nearly as amused.

"Dreams are fantasies, but even fantasies have a bit of truth in them, do they not?" The tall man leaned against one coral strut; arms and legs crossed in a copy of a pose the Doctor knew so well. "One imagines they are naked because of their own fears and anxieties, one sees a dancing midget because they are confused by a situation in front of them."

He paused, something akin to humor glimmering in the starlit depths. "I can't explain a giant meat pie, however."

"See, that's my point, why anyone would dream that," began the Doctor, but he was silenced by one look of the imposing figure.

"You dream of a woman you loved and lost and let get away again." Morpheus regarded him with the all the even, matter-of-factness that now cut at the Doctor's heart. "Because you, Lord of Time, dared to fall in love with a mortal woman and she broke your hearts."

Rose Tyler had. Or rather, he had set it up that way, stacked the deck in that favor. Both of himselves had been in on that, for both he and the version of himself formed from the metacrises had known the truth. They both desperately loved the same woman. And only one of them would ever have a chance at living the sort of life with Rose Tyler that they wished. For one, his song was just beginning. For the other, his song was soon ending.

"I couldn't let Rose stay," the Doctor replied simply.

"How noble of you," Morpheus replied dryly, without a trace of comfort in his sardonic smile.

"What do you know of it," the Doctor snapped viciously, hints of the tempest that raged just beneath the surface all the time with rising to the surface. Even this one, Morpheus as so many called him, backed down somewhat in the face of that.

"I know what it means to fall in love with a human, Lord of Time." Something like empathy, maybe, appeared in the glassy darkness of his expression. "I too have loved and I too have lost. Perhaps, in that sense, I understand your pain all too well."

"Do you?" The Doctor had trouble believing that of one such as he. "I gave her everything I could, you know. I would have done _anything _for her. I gave her me."

"And yet you are still alone."

He hadn't meant it cruelly. At least the Doctor didn't believe so. But still it ached to hear, cutting to the quick.

"Yes, I am."

What else could he say?

"Everything is changing," he sighed, slumping into his seat, rumpling his suit. "I will be changing soon. I know it. I know what's coming. Everything that Rose loves…everything about me that loves her, it will all change. It will all end and if she had stayed who knows how things would have ended. It's happened before, with companions, things are different once I change." Poor Peri, he recalled. He'd nearly killed her.

"Whether you believe me or not," came the dark voice from the corner, "I understand better than you know."

The Doctor turned up to study the man, if that was what he could call him.

"I feel that same weight you do, Doctor. That weight of responsibility, of duty, of promises made. And I know what it is like to know that change is on the wind."

Sadness. The Doctor was surprised at that. The few times he had encountered one of Morpheus' kind he had detected it here and there, those real emotions others felt. But not to this depth, not like this.

"What changes await you, Dream Lord?"

The other man merely shrugged. "Didn't you once say that everything dies? Everything comes to an end?"

He had. "I didn't think there was an end to a dream?"

"Perhaps not an end to a dream, merely just a change of perspective." He looked old all of the sudden, old and tired. Very much how the Doctor himself felt. "Perhaps a change of perspective will be good for both of us."

Perhaps it would be. He had lost so much and had hurt so much. Perhaps it would be good to have a change of outlook. "I will still miss her, you know."

"That's why I send you those dreams. So you won't forget."

"How can I forget Rose Tyler?" The Doctor couldn't imagine it. "She gave me hope when I thought I had none at all."

"And you get to live out your days with her, in a fashion."

Just not the fashion he had wanted, the Doctor silently added.

Morpheus shook his dark tangle of hair, unfairly more magnificent than even his. "You will learn to love again, Doctor. You always do. It's the way of us dreamers. We can't seem to help ourselves."

"It won't be the same," the Doctor replied mulishly.

"Do you want it to be?"

"No." Of that he was certain. "No, I want Rose Tyler to be just her. When next I come to love someone it shall be different."

"As it should be." The Lord of Dreams stood to his full height, which disconcertingly was taller even than the Doctor's in this form. "Rest well and dream, Doctor."

The darkness of the robes that clad the form of Morpheus rose then, swirling around the console room, covering the face of the master of dreams, till only the singular light of his eye shone in the depths. Soon even the light of the time rotor itself winked out as the TARDIS formed a pleasant hum in the Doctor's existence.

He slept that night for the first time in a long while. And it was, for once, a dreamless sleep.


	7. Delirium

Chapter Seven: Delirium

It was all new, this life, with new sensations everywhere. Clothes felt differently, things smelled differently, and food…_Rasillion, _who knew fish fingers and custard, was so amazing?

He giggled to himself at the thought. He was a new man, this was a new adventure, he had a new friend…Amelia, Amy, Pond…he liked Pond. Perhaps he would call her simply that.

"Fish fingers…fish!" One floated by his head, a neon purple gold fish, lazily drifting on the currents in his galley. He smiled at it as it wandered past.

"Mad…I've finally turned that corner, haven't I?"

"You've always been mad….I think?" The girl across the table giggled in delight as she spooned up the custard with crunchy bits of breaded fish into her mouth. "This is quite good."

"I know, who would have thought?" He laughs as he watches the sparkling, rainbow of light and goldfish wend through the room. "You know, this is likely just a bad regeneration process. I've always had the worst side effects. Least I'm not trying to kill anyone."

"That's what you get for cheating Death, my sister doesn't like it much, but she does like other things, like dark chocolate, and strawberries, and fuzzy slippers, and Paddington Bear, and she squeals quite a lot over those silly little, fat, angel babies with wings, you know, with all the flowers and silly fluffy, and I've never understood it, but she says there is some irony in it that I'd get better if I wasn't so very confused all the time, and you know your ship talks to people, because it keeps talking to me, it whispers such things….what is Bad Wolf?"

The Doctor stopped his daydream of staring at two squiggly, colorful lines engaged in some sort of lurid mating ritual to glance lazily at the child with her multicolored, scraggily hair and her torn, fishnet shirt. "Someone you don't need to worry about, little one."

It did make his heart ache just a bit.

"Oh…she sounds lovely though," the girl mused dreamily, pulling up scabby knees to her chin.

"She was…is…always will be." He sighed. That was a different him, a different life, and he was a new man with a new companion who was brilliant.

"I like gingers!" He announced as before his eyes one half of his new friends hair suddenly became flaming red. "I liked Donna and she was ginger. I think Pond will suit admirably."

"Ponds aren't ginger, they are clear," replied the girl with a matter-of-fact roll of her eyes. "You can see clear through that Pond, if you want to."

The Doctor had no idea what that even meant. He was preoccupied by the azalea push sprouting out of his rubbish bin. "Never been much of an azalea person."

"You pick up toys and play with them for a while, then you throw them away broken," the girl continued, oblivious to the large, flowering shrub in his trash. "You can see through the pond to the river and they are all just caught up in your stream and neither one of them will get to go in a straight line but will be all twisty turny while you keep falling, falling, falling."

Her hand looped up and crashed down, straight into the bowl of custard.

"Oi! That's breakfast!" He protested as cream and fish finger went everywhere.

"Why do they call it fish fingers if fish don't have fingers," the girl mused, licking the concoction off of her hands.

The Doctor had to admit that he wondered that himself.

"So anyway, yes, falling, falling, and soon you will go BOOM!" The girl smacked sticky fingers together in front of her twin colored eyes, the blue one swirling, the green one fixed on him. "And it will take something quite impossible to put the raggedy man back together again."

"Impossible seems to be my middle name," he joked, staring into the alarming depths of one jade eye.

"No it isn't, Lord of Time." She suddenly became very lucid on him in a way that struck terror inside. "Doctor isn't even your real name. It's your title, your purpose, the sacred vow you took when you stood by my brother's side all those years ago. You've been running down your golden path without heed to everything you've left behind. And it will cost you very soon."

Slowly she blinked her eyes, sticky fingers reaching for him. "Beware the silence, beware the whispers, for the song that comes from the river will lead to your demise."

Her broken, cracked, dirty nails cut into the skin of his hand painfully, but he dared not move or even breath, not even to bat at the goldfish in his face, until those two, crazed eyes opened once again. They both stared, unfocused at the creature hovering I front of his nose.

"Is my goldfish bothering you?"

"A bit, yeah," he admitted as she let him go, reaching for the scaly, bright creature and shoving it into a pocket of her shabby coat.

"I need to go," she murmured absently, hopping off of the chair. "Have fun with the Pond, don't swim in it though, I don't think that the Rory will like it."

"Sure," he shrugged, watching as she bent to smell the azaleas.

"I don't like her as much as Sarah," the girl sighed sadly, her hair now fading to a strawberry blonde. And for a moment the Doctor thought he could see another girl, one he saw on a beach long ago, taking delight in blue sand and lavender sky and Sarah Jane Smith dancing in the water. "Sarah was not as loud."

"Everyone is different," the Doctor replied and realized how much he too had changed in the centuries since. "I need her in my life."

"Be careful what you wish for, Lord of Time," the girl replied, and her hair was once again a riot of color in different lengths. She leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek, his new one. She smelled of stale wine and old cigarettes, sweat, and the faint hint of the memories of a county fair somewhere.

"Madness always seems to follow in your wake."

The girl smiled sadly at this and without a word marched out of his kitchen. Where she went, the Doctor didn't know. But now he was left with a kitchen covered in custard and a giant, flowering shrub in his trash. He better clean it up before Amy wandered in and discovered all of this.


	8. Daniel

Chapter Eight: Daniel

Everything changed in the universe. And so had he. Many times as a matter of fact. He went from being an old man to a young one, from being a crotchety fellow in his Edwardian dress to a spastic madman with a fez on his head…sometimes a cowboy hat. He had morphed and changed and shaped himself over centuries, a millennia. And now it was all coming home to roost.

Clara didn't know the danger she was in. But the Doctor did. And Trenzalore was where this was all going to end up.

"Things are changing," he sighed, feeling very old in that moment. He sat in his comfy armchair, a book unread in his lap. The universe was shifting in ways he didn't like, forcing him to admit things about himself he wasn't keen on, and he really wished they would just go away. Why did things have to change?

"They always do, old friend."

He should recognize the voice. But it is different. Younger, softer, more exuberant. He blinked across the space to the young man in front of him, both the same and yet different. The tall, gaunt figure was still there, but he was bright now, white, shining. The dark hair was now snowy, though just as messy. But the eyes…those hadn't changed. They were still just as dark and unfathomable.

"Do we still go by Morpheus, then, Dream Lord?" The Doctor had to wonder speculatively.

"No," he replied quickly but kindly. "Daniel is good enough for me."

"So, a new face? That is a neat trick."

"Like you are one to talk," the man that had wandered all his dreams since he was a child sniffed, but grinned. "But yes. I am different."

"So it seems." The Doctor simply shrugged. He was a Time Lord, he understood those sorts of changes better than most. "I assume in most ways that matter you are still the same man?"

"Just as you are still the same man, Doctor." The young man seemed amused by his curiosity. He leaned, much as his predecessor did, against the console of the TARDIS. "Who we are, at heart, never changes. What dies is a point of view."

"It's a funny way of putting it," the Doctor replied. But it was a good way of putting it. Over eleven different bodies he had carried the name of the Doctor. And those weren't the only ones he had. The ones he recognized were the ones that had kept that long ago promise he had made as he stared into the Untempered Schism.

"You ever wish you could take back things you did?"

"Morpheus did." The thin shoulders under their cumbersome, gleaming robes rose and fell. "He had much to atone for."

"I can imagine," the Doctor mused, remembering the only one of these strange beings who was ever a constant in his life. "And you don't feel his regrets?"

"Not in the same way." Daniel's deep, dark eyes stared deep into the Doctor's. "But it is different for you."

"Yes and no." He sighed, his skin itching under the fathomless gaze of the being in his console. "It wasn't me, not in the real sense, but it was."

"Semantics don't help when you are dealing with past sins."

"Have you ever destroyed your own people?"

Daniel hadn't expected that reply. "No."

"Well, then, I suppose in this sense you can't really understand."

"But you dream of them still, don't you? And wish things could have been different."

"I do." How could he not? So much death and destruction at his hands. "I miss them."

"Your people?"

'Yes." He sighed, a long, deep, painful sound in a chest aching with the long broken hearts of a man far too long on his own. "My people who died for nothing it seems. The Daleks are still around. I ache for everyone who has ever had to suffer because of what I did." He thought of Amy and Rory, somewhere in the past. At least they had each other. And of River, of course. Poor doomed River who he was never particularly fair to, from the moment of her birth to the moment of her death.

"I feel all stretched out and thin," he admitted to the pale figure in front of him, his fingers working at the leather of his book. "Perhaps it is time for a change."

"A new perspective always puts a spin on things," Daniel agreed. Really, he was so much more pleasant than his predecessor. "Just when you think that dreams are failing you, change comes along and gives you a fresh, new outlook."

He had a feeling the other man would say something like that. "Things are coming to an end, aren't they?"

"And a beginning." Daniel replied simply, standing up straight now, hands on his slim hips. "Some things in this universe are endless, Doctor, without time, eternal and universal."

The Doctor had a feeling that after all of these years he might be one of those things. "What are you, Daniel? You and your kind who come to haunt me in moments like these? What are you?"

"Something akin to you, Doctor," he smiled slowly under eyes as deep as space. "Something that is endless."

If possible the young man in front of him grew whiter, brighter, longer, and fuller, a halo of light that stung the Doctor's eyes as he squinted against them. And it was only in hindsight he realized that once again, he was asleep, and that now was the moment of wakefulness as he felt heat in his face and a hand on his shoulder.

"Doctor?" Clara's worry was clear as he frowned up into a torch being shown very rudely into his eyes. "Are you ever waking up?"

"For what," he yawned, grumpy as he batted the light from his face.

"We were going on an outing, you and I." She frowned, dark eyes confused. "Don't you remember?"

Outing? "Yes, I did. Errr…could you shine that light somewhere else."

"Oh!" She grinned as she did as he asked, studying him as he rubbed his grainy eyes. "Funny, you must have been having an interesting dream. You were totally out of it."

"Something like that," he muttered by way of response.


	9. Death

Chapter Nine: Death

Even the Doctor reached the point where he could run no more.

He had been here before, once, long ago, with Jack and Martha and even the Master. The universe was ending. Humanity had ventured off onto it's one, last adventure. Soon even that would be cut short.

It was the end of time. Which meant there was no place for a Time Lord anymore.

"It makes me rather sad to think about," he sighed, leaning against his one constant companion, his TARDIS. His ship, Idris, Sexy, whatever he wanted to call her, hummed in his mind, the only being left that could do such a thing. Everything else was dead or would be soon. Everything except for him.

They were all gone now. All his companions, all of his friends, all of the people he'd helped and races he had saved. The planets he had visited millions of times were now simply scattered bits of stardust in the void of space, stretched far from each other and the stars they once called home. The universe had grown too old and thin, just like he had.

"Funny, you don't show a day of it."

He knew the voice, knew the face, had seen it over and over again countless times in those moments between one life and the other. Her voice had always sung in his ears, her face had always been the one he glimpsed in the throws of unbearable pain. Yet she had never spoken to him, had never touched him or held his hand. She had always seemed sad by this. He'd thought she would be angry, but she never had been. Only just disappointed.

"You are Death, then?" He had been expecting her.

"Yep," she replied, leaning back against his TARDIS with him. She hardly looked like death. Well, perhaps a personification of death if one was a late 20th or early 21st century Goth girl from Earth. Her clothes consisting of slim, black jeans and a black tank top screamed something circa 1993 in Earth years. A black lace bra peeked through the shoulder straps, and around her neck a silver ankh glimmered in the dim starlight. Her dark hair was a riot, but it was her eyes, lined black, one with the eye of Horus around it that spoke to just how ancient she was. But they were also filled with compassion, boundless understanding. And she smiled genuinely up at him.

"I figured you would hate me," he told her simply.

"I was never a fan of Time Lords, no." She shrugged her milk white shoulders. "But then, you were always different."

"So I've been told." He sighed, watching the distant pinpricks of ice in the sky. "But everything dies. Is it my time yet?"

"Yes," she replied. He felt her reach a hand out for his and he took it. It had been a long time since anyone had held his fingers, and he felt himself clutch them hard.

"I'm not afraid," he told her, even if deep down inside he was, just a little.

"You shouldn't be," she assured him, a kind smile on her blood, red lips. "You've run for a very long time, Doctor. And it is time now for you to rest."

"I'd like that," he admitted, leaning hard against his ship. The TARDIS hummed. He could feel that she too was tired. They both had been running for so very long.

"It's been grand though, hasn't it?" He was talking as much to his ship as to the girl beside him. "This entire life? All the people of I've met. All the places I've been."

"And lives you've changed," Death added pointedly. Her mass of dark hair quirked sideways as she glanced up at him. "So many lives you changed for the better."

"Did I?" He sometimes wondered about that. "I would like to think that."

"It's true." She glanced out to the stars. "Your name lives on through history, Doctor, even now as it ends. You've followed Destiny, just as he told you to. And now, it is time for it all to come to an end."

She leaned up, on her tiptoes, to press soft lips to his, surprisingly warm ones, that tasted of wine and life and laughter. And he thought of Rose, and possibilities, and his hearts ached, but he regretted nothing. He pulled away, smiling down at the woman in his arms as she turned to the man behind her, the man in a cowl he had first met so long ago.

"You've done well, Lord of Time," the man intoned in voices as deep as the grave. "And now you've completed your course.

"Well, then," the Doctor nodded, a smiling lighting the face that was far younger than his years. "What's next?"

"Follow me," Death smiled, tugging at his hand. She didn't run and for once he didn't feel the urge to do so. He simply did as she asked, walking in her wake towards a door that stood in the middle of nowhere.

"So this is it?" He asked in surprise, curiosity getting the better of him. He resisted the urge to pull out his sonic and prod the structure. "The end of the universe is a door?"

"I thought it was fitting. Sort of very C.S. Lewis." Death shot him a whimsical smile as she stopped at the door with a flourish. "So, who goes in first?"

The Doctor frowned, glancing between himself and the man in the robes beside him. "I am not sure what the procedure here is."

"Time ends with me, Time Lord," Destiny's voice echoed even in the void of space.

Death merely rolled her pretty eyes. "Seriously, you two are going to argue over this?"

"Well it is a bit weird, stepping through the door into something else beyond without knowing what's there." The Doctor threw up his hands, turning to glance behind him at the blue box, now standing sad and forlorn on the rock they found themselves on. "Besides, there's my ship. My TARDIS. I can't just…leave her behind. She's my best friend, always has been. She's all I've had for most of my life."

"And she is still right here, Doctor." Death held up her hand with a flourish. Laying in her pale palm was a tiny blue box, a fraction of the size of his beloved beauty. He glanced up to where the TARDIS was sitting and found his machine now gone.

"This is her, then?" He carefully reached a thumb and forefinger to pick up the tiny thing. He felt it, his ship, pulse in his mind as he did so, the same comforting presence he had always known.

"You think I would dare separate the two of you?" Death smiled, a grin that was so similar to Roses, wide and open and fresh. He thought he could easily love a woman like this…well, if she weren't the personification of death.

"Now do you feel ready to go?" She reached for the doorknob, preparing to open it.

With the TARDIS by his side? "What's on the other side?"

The only adventure you've never been able to have, Doctor." She replied simply.

Well, when she put it like that.

"I suppose I can do," he nodded as she opened the door. He glanced back at the universe splayed behind him, turned to look at it once last time. In the shimmering dark the stars sprinkled like diamonds on velvet, filled with dreams and desires, destruction and despair, delirium and delight, destiny and even death.

"I think I'm ready to go," he nodded, glancing at the pair. "Perhaps on the other side of this door is something better, something new and exciting. I'd like to think whatever is on the other side, it's fantastic."

"For you, Doctor, I hope it is," Death agreed earnestly. He took her hand, gave it one last squeeze, and made his way through the doorway.

"And thus it ends, my brother." Death turned to the man who stood beside her. "The end of all things. It's time for you as well."

"Yes, my sister," he said, meekly enough. And into the light at the other side the man carrying the weight of time itself in his arms shuffled, the sound of his golden chains clinking as he went. Once he too disappeared into the light, Death smiled. She straightened her top, ran a hand through her wild hair, and followed, closing the door behind herself.

And one by one the stars blinked out.


End file.
